A fighter jet does a barrel roll, narrowly evading the missiles of an alien spacecraft. The jet banks and dives, weaves in and out and between enemy fighters. It fires a Gatling gun, destroying one of the alien invaders.

This is not your standard arcade videogame. It is not your multimillion-dollar Will Smith blockbuster. Rather, it is a new iPhone application that attempts to bring the freedom of 3-D flight simulators to 2-D gaming. Lightning Assault, a combat game in which the player battles UFOs, is the culmination of a three-year project undertaken by a trio of friends – amateur developers who created the product out of a love for gaming and digital art.

"Developing a game is something I wanted to give a shot," said Tim Chua, 31, the chief designer of Lightning Assault and a Newport Beach resident. "Most 2-D games allow you to move up or down, left or right. I wanted to add new maneuvers, like a barrel roll."

Lightning Assault pits the player's fighter jet against an alien mother ship and its minions. You can select one of four planes, each of which has unique weapons, from the antiquated Gatling to a futuristic laser.

Lightning Assault differentiates itself from similar games by allowing more freedom of movement, Chua said.

Unlike Space Invaders, for example, you can do more than move side to side shooting enemies.

The bad guys become faster and more complex the further into the game a player gets.

The game was released in the App store Dec. 3 and sells for 99 cents. It has been downloaded about 110 times, according to Vincent Yancoskie, 22, one of the three friends, a Fountain Valley resident and senior at Cal State Fullerton.

The response of those who have played it, he said, has been largely positive.

"We created a product people really enjoy," he said.

The third member of the team is Jean-Rosch Prudencio, an animation and game-design student at George Brown College in Toronto. Chua and Prudencio are friends from Canada, where Chua was raised. Chua came to the United States in 2007 and works for Emulex, a Costa Mesa-based technology firm. He met Yancoskie at the Church of Fountain Valley, where they are both members.

Lightning Assault was a side project for the trio that took "thousands of hours" to complete, according to Chua. Added Yancoskie: "We applied our hobby skills."

The group, co-founders of Prism Game Studios, had never done anything like this. Yet, they dove into the project with near-obsessive commitment.

"I would dedicate hours and hours to it," Chua said. "I'd go to work, come home and work on it until 4 a.m."

In the end, though, he and his colleagues are proud of what they accomplished and their ability to get it in the App store.

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